Asus ROG Strix SCAR 17 (2023)

Number-crunching beast on a budget

- DAVE JAMES

AMD’S NEW RANGE of Zen 4 mobile chips are the finest number crunchers that you’ll find in a gaming laptop. That makes this Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 one of the most powerful gaming laptops I’ve ever tested. This is also the most affordable RTX 4090 machine I’ve seen in this generation, and one of the best-performing RTX 4090 machines I’ve seen, which is a combination that makes this laptop easy to recommend.

Just bear in mind that this isn’t at the top end of Asus’s ROG offerings. That means there’s no ROG Nebula Display like on the excellent Zephyrus G14, meaning this Scar 17’s display looks dull, and maybe a little tired. I also feel like the machine doesn’t quite have the quality I’ve been used to from the other Asus laptops I’ve looked at. Trackpads are historically bad on gaming notebooks, but this one is painfully poor. And then there’s the fingerprints—the matte finish looks nice out of the box, but give it ten minutes of use, and it’s going to be permanently stained by the natural oils of your skin.

You absolutely do need to be plugging it in, because despite that 90Wh battery, it really doesn’t last long away from a wall socket. If you’re gaming, consider the battery like some sort of uninterruptible power supply rather than something to rely on for long.